The Story of a Great Schoolmaster

by H. G. Wells

The practical quality of the old boys from Oundle became apparent at once. They stepped from laboratory and factory and office into commissions; they returned from all over the world to prepare for the battlefields. By 1918 over a thousand Oundle boys had gone into the fighting services, three had V.C.'s, many had been mentioned in despatches, awarded the Military Cross and the like.

He did his best to find God and creative force in the world convulsion. Here is a part of an address to the Church Parade of the Cadet Corps which shows his very fine and very human struggle to impose a nobility of interpretation upon the grim distressful last stages of the war.

'It is a pleasant thing to wander about these fields and watch the cadets who are told off to instruct their squads. It is a splendid illustration of the power of co-operation in education—where boys and men, or where a community work together, teaching one another, learning one from the other, where all are teachers and scholars, a body of co-workers, helping, encouraging, stimulating each other. This community method is dominant wherever there is a great stirring, e.g. a great call, a great pressing into a new kingdom; wherever there is a great discovery and a new need. The war will establish it in schools.

And just one word when you go forth from here. You will carry this mutual co-operative spirit with you. You will love your men, take care of their interests, making full use of their individual faculties, and learn to be co-workers with them.

It is often said that wars will never cease—that they are a necessity—and in a sense this is true. One thing we know quite well, that in all affairs of life peace may be simply the peace of death. There is the peace of lifelessness, of inactivity, notwithstanding all its autumnal beauty. There is the quiet peace which changes not, the conventional belief, the conventional kind of round of work, with lack of initiative, of experiment, of testing and trials. There is the peace which follows on contentment with things as they are, the peace of death. The land of peace and of convention, and of cruel contentment. The land of dark Satanic mills—as in Blake's imagery. War may come to break up this deathful peace. So said John Ruskin. I have a letter written to me just when the war broke out. In July 1914 the O.T.C. was inspected by General Birkbeck, and in his speech he expressed his belief that war was coming. On 2nd August, 1914, he wrote to me:—

"Dear Mr. Sanderson,—We little thought when I spoke to those boys of yours how near we were to our trial!" and he adds: "These are the words of a peaceful philosopher, Mr. Ruskin, when concluding a series of lectures on War at Woolwich Royal Academy Institution, which may give you comfort. Men talk of peace and plenty, of peace and learning, of peace and civilisation; but I found that those are not the words which the muse of history has coupled together! On her lips the words are Peace and Selfishness, Peace and Sensuality, Peace and Death!!! I learned, in short, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were taught by war and betrayed by peace—trained by war and deceived by peace—nourished in war and decayed in peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."

This is the prophet's call to arise and awaken out of sleep; to abandon the easy life of routine and routine's belief. It is a call to rise up and breathe life into the dry bones of the past; it is the trumpet blast for active warfare against all things that have become lifeless and dead. It is the herald call for a new army, to build up a new world of active, creative, dynamic Peace.'

§ 2

In April 1918 his eldest son, Roy, died of wounds at Estaires after the battle of the Lys. Loss after loss of boys and trusted colleagues had grieved and distressed him; now came this culminating blow. There had been the closest understanding between father and son; Roy had left engineering to become a master at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, which Sanderson had helped to reconstruct, and more and more had the father looked to his boy as his chosen disciple and possible successor.

On the Whitsunday following Sanderson preached a sermon on the text: 'I will not leave you desolate, I will come unto you.' The notes of the sermon were untidy, and have had to be carefully pieced together, but I think they rise to a very high level of poetry. And when I copy them out I think how the dear sturdy man in his academic gown must have stood up and clung to his desk, after his manner, full of grief and sorrowful memories of the one 'gentle soul,' in particular, and of many other gentle souls, he had lost—clinging to his desk with both hands as he clung to his faith and speaking stoutly.